TicketLeap Offers Open Letter to SDCC 2011 Fans

TicketLeap has reached out to Convention Scene and all Comic-Con International fans with an open letter concerning what happened on Saturday:

Dear Comic-Con International Fans

In 2009, it sold out after 6 months. In 2010, it sold out in 2 months. On Saturday, Comic-Con International 2011 sold out in 7 HOURS (200x faster than last year if you’re keeping track). Needless to say, the demand was unbelievable, reaching a peak of 403,000 page requests per minute and a total of more than 35 million total page requests throughout the day. But while the event sold out in record time and the system never actually went down, things didn’t go as smoothly as we hoped. We are sorry for the frustration our system issues caused on Saturday and we are working hard to answer all of your inquiries. Below you will find the answers to the most common questions regarding ticket sales for Comic-Con International, and click here for a more detailed technical write-up for those who are interested. Also, here is a link to an article on GigaOM with their take on our technical write-up.

When will tickets go on sale again?

At this time, Comic-Con International 2011 is sold out. As refunds are processed, more tickets may become available to purchase at a later date. Please refer to Comic-Con’s website, Facebook page or Twitter page for the latest updates.

I have questions about my TicketLeap confirmation email.

TicketLeap will be re-sending all confirmation emails on Monday, February 7, 2011 (even if you received it the first time around). Your confirmation email will contain a link for each separate transaction. By default, the email shows the start date of the event (Thursday, July 21). Click the link to view the detailed list of all tickets purchased.

I did not receive bar coded email confirmations from EPIC Registration. How do I get my bar coded email confirmations?

EPIC Registration will send out bar coded email confirmations (separate from the TicketLeap confirmations referenced above). You will receive one bar coded confirmation from EPIC for each badge/admission type. This is your “ticket” to Comic-Con International. Please add the epicreg.com domain to your safe senders list so your confirmation will not go to your spam folder. If you do not receive one bar coded confirmation for each purchased ticket by Wednesday, February 9, 2011, please contact EPIC by email at registration@epicreg.com. Your email to EPIC should include your TicketLeap confirmation number(s) and the name(s) for which you did not receive a bar coded confirmation. Note: You may not receive all of your bar coded confirmations from EPIC at the same time so please wait until Wednesday to inquire with EPIC if you have not received all of them.

How do I request a refund for Comic-Con International ticket(s)that I purchased?

All ticket refund requests will be processed directly through Comic-Con International. Please refer to their Registration Page for refund policies and instructions. TicketLeap has no authority or ability to issue refunds or handle refunds requests.

I entered incorrect information when I purchased my Comic-Con ticket(s). How can I correct the information for my badges?

If you submitted incorrect contact information when purchasing your tickets, these changes can be made on the EPIC Registration site after you receive the bar coded confirmation emails from their system. Any further questions you should have after receiving the bar coded confirmation emails from EPIC should be submitted to EPIC at registration@epicreg.com no earlier than Wednesday, February 9, 2011.

There are multiple charges on my credit card for tickets I didn’t purchase or receive. How do I correct those charges?

Most likely, what you’re seeing is a pending only charge that will drop on its own in 2-3 business days. If you received an error message while attempting your purchase and had to re-submit your information, your bank or card issuer might have temporarily pulled those funds which we cannot accept due to the error that occurred. Typically, these charges will drop in 2-3 business days but please contact your card issuer to find out when they can release the hold on those pending only charges.

Comments

Great coverage of the whole situation. We are doing our best to handle all issues that resulted from Saturday. And, we appreciate and want all of your feedback. Here are some recent updates…
With respect to the technical details and whether or not we had enough server capacity, the fact that we scaled up so much (64 servers to be exact) actually exacerbated the problem that we exposed. So, we ended up scaling down the number of servers to solve the problem during the rush on Saturday. And, that was the only reason we were able to sell out the event (or even a single ticket) on Saturday. That’s the bad and then the good of cloud computing.